From luxury to appendage.....

And the latest from the front in a guerilla war that was becoming another major nuisance in my last years of teaching:

"But parents and students have a legitimate point when they argue that kids need cell phones to help coordinate after-school activities, and for safety along the way."

Ah, yes, there's no way anyone even HAD a life before cell phones, that's for sure. And as for safety? The problem at the local university is that no fewer than three students have been killed in recent years by vehicles (in two cases, city buses), two while talking on cell phones, and one with a headset on, all three perfectly oblivious to their doom. There's safety for you.

The recurrent notion that a cell phone is going to provide some salvation if a latter-day Columbine or Virginia Tech is under way is the other mantra one hears. These massacres have transpired with such speed that it's unclear what use a cell phone would be. If even a few of the thirty-some dead at Virginia Tech had been armed and willing to defend themselves, it's very probable that the shooting would have stopped at that point. I wonder what an interview with the survivors who had cell phone would yield? Not much, I suspect.

The only way I'll concede that a cell phone is going to bring the cavalry to the rescue in time to do any good is if the local SWAT team happens purely by chance to be driving by the scene. Unfortunately, real life just doesn't work that way, and I'll eschew my cell phone for a .40 Glock under those circumstances.

In conclusion: There is no cogent rationale for allowing students into the classroom with cell phones, pagers, music-listening devices, etc. They are distractions from the learning process, pure and simple, and anyone of average sense and sensibility should be able to see that. Of course, I've heard that Diogenes finally gave up on the "honest man" thing, and is poking around corners with his lantern held high, attempting to illuminate "a grain of common sense."

Bwahahahaha!

Apparently an arsonist torched the eponymous Burning Man wooden statue in the wee hours Tuesday morning. How dare such an anarchist anticipate the celebration of anarchy that would have occurred four days later?!? I imagine the organizers and participants were glad that all the right-wing establishement goons were on hand to arrest, jail, and prosecute Mr. Addis.

I have to post this, of course, or even material much less ironic. God help me, I love it so.

Thanks to Brian Tiemann at Peeve Farm for the link.

I don't get it....

I don't see the purpose of this "bulletproof backpack," since it's unlikely to protect the wearer from anything. Of course, it can be added to a myriad other products of marginal or even negative utility.....or viewed as a manifestation of a certain kind of insanity.

Another Theory of Spam

I have come to the conclusion over the past few years that day-to-day news is almost completely irrelevant. This is possibly supported by the statistical theory labelled The Black Swan, which posits that most important events and discoveries are unexpected....and the endless babble that has become the 24-hour news media is hard enough to deal with in separating signal from noise the way it is. Therefore, I need only wait for the important to occur, and if it's important enough, it will make itself manifest.

I have therefore concluded that "news" as it is understood in the early 21st century, as regurgitated by media in any form, is almost all identical to what is branded "spam" in e-mail, only different in that it pretends to information rather than advertising.

In the past three months, I have performed the experiment of having Google's News Reader perform the sole function of channeling news to my laptop, and the Tragic Lantern stays OFF. TV was a part of the familar everyday world to me for around 50 years- but I can't say that I miss it. It is now used for the sole function of prerecording shows or movies for entertainment, or showing same on DVD.

This in no way applies to local news, but "local" to me also has a very limited definition, and it's surprising how fast it falls off beyond Sangamon Township, where I live in what used to be a rural environment, but where those of us who moved here for reasons of our own have been joined by large numbers of city dwellers, who carry most of their urban predelictions with them as they fashion their estates -complete with drywall barns- in what they deem "rural splendor."

As far as "thinking globally," that was just another passing hallucination. Human beings are capable of dealing ethically with an absolute maximum of about 150 people; the rest is a mathematical abstraction.

I can have no impact on the fate of the dolphin or snail darter, the Amazon rain forest or the coming engineering of the human genome.....nor, as T.S. Eliot said, "-was meant to be." This attitude would no doubt horrify much that is embodied in fashionable ethics. I don't give a damn.

Moral obligations to distant others falls off fairly directly, and logarithmically, as the distance. I have the highest degree of obligation to my own beliefs and principles, followed by my friends and family. I have only to acknowledge the humanity of the inhabitants of Sulawesi or Central Park West. Although I have apparently omitted any connection to my nation, that, of course, is a convention. At my age, I consider my duties to society discharged (and more), and any ongoing reckoning I make, per formula, every April 15th.

Before I made this transition, I was like a happy man with a persistent deerfly buzzing around his head. Now the fly is gone.

Prospective Plaintiffs

It should have been possible to predict- tort law has now moved into realms of injuries that might occur.

"Less than a week after Mattel recalled about nearly a million Chinese-made toys in the U.S. believed to be contaminated with lead paint, an Alabama mother has filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status in the Central District of California against the company and Target, which sells Mattel toys, alleging negligence and asking for funds to medically monitor kids that “suffered an increased risk for serious health problems.”

For centuries, the basis of tort law is that an injury or damage has occurred (that's what a "tort" is). Now, we're moving back to the future.

This is, of course, consistent with those ambulance chasers who want to use their time machines to sue contemporary society for the effects of slavery, the Black Death, the eruption of Pompeii in 79 AD. The fun never stops, and is no coincidence that this lawsuit, although originating with someone in Alabama, is being filed in "-the Central District of California." Them folks in Alabama ain't advanced enough to allow this lawsuit, no doubt.

Is this complicated, really?

I've been reading about as much as I can stand about the mortgage crisis, and its effect on stocks, etc. and blah (all of which I find excessively tedious) and all the complexity and terminology seems to boil down to one very old-fashioned word: greed.
Now the unthinkable (or what greedy people just don't WANT to think about) has happened, and lots of people are running for cover. Shades of 1987, back to 1929, whenever.....all it actually proves is that there really IS nothing new under the sun.

Forget oil....

As I've read from time to time, the "sleeper crisis" that will overtake oil in a short time is water. We live on a water planet, but only about 5-7% at any given time can be described as "fresh," and what we've got isn't getting any more plentiful, or any fresher. Here is some interesting perspective from GE's Chief Marketing Officer for Water and Process Technologies.

A Small Symptom

I finally ran across the exact quote I referred to yesterday, and who it's attributed to: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, referring to the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River at Minneapolis.

"A bridge in America just shouldn't fall down," Klobuchar said at a news conference with Coleman.

Whatever its intent, or the context, it pretty much sums up the "why" part of my complete disaffection with government. If I am wrong, Klobuchar, Coleman and others will take immediate steps to pass legislation that will see to it that our crumbling infrastructure -bridges, highways, railroads, electrical grid, etc.- is rehabilitated, brought up to date, and maintained properly. But I'm not holding my breath, because it's not going to happen.

Oh, it's not the worst or most pernicious form of this particular syndrome. An example of what is can be found in William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Chapter 12, "The Road to Munich" -which I am re-reading for reasons both complex and peripheral to this post. Chamberlain allows himself to be duped by Hitler (oh, he knew....) in the topic "Surrender at Munich: September 29-30, 1938," and comes back to Britain and utters the immortal lines: "My good friends," he said, "this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time."
This was no belief at all, but a desperate wish that what Chamberlain knew was certain to occur, what it would take a miracle to prevent from occurring, would -somehow- not happen. He was the Prime Minister of a great nation, and many cheered his words -and yet, in less than a year, World War II was underway.

This is just another version of what happens when politicians pretend bridges shouldn't fall; it will ensure the familiar, odd human trait that consists of a combination of willful blindness, and ignoring, and forgetting continues, and is perpetuated by such people as Sen. Klobuchar, and, I fear, all too many of those in government.

Simic Named Poet Laureate

Today Charles Simic was named 17th Poet Laureate of the U.S. This is one way that, taking one thing with another, we might have refrained from imitating Great Britain. Furthermore, I have read a number of Simic compositions that I think are crap.

Nevertheless. IF we were justified in naming a poet laureate, I would accept Charles Simic in that sinecure solely on the grounds of writing Ax:

AX

Whoever swings an ax
Knows the body of man
Will again be covered with fur.
The stench of blood and swamp water
Will return to its old resting place.

They’ll spend their winters
Sleeping like bears.
The skin on the throats of their women
Will grow coarse. He who cannot
Grow teeth, will not survive.
He who cannot howl,
Will not find his pack....

These dark prophecies were gathered
Unknown to myself, by my body
Which understands historical probabilities,
Lacking itself, in its essence, a future.

— Charles Simic

Just When You Think It's Safe....

....to turn on the TV, somebody comes on and quotes an unnamed U.S. Senator:

"No bridge in the United States should ever collapse."

Looking for that repeal of the laws of physics.....

On Infrastructure

If the I-35 bridge collapse in MN brings anything good, it may be to draw some serious political attention (although the last three words seem an oxymoron in these benighted times) to our crumbling lifelines. A reporter was told, when he got indignant that the I-35 bridge was classified "deficient," that 160,000 other bridges in the U.S. were similarly tagged. That shut him up.

Unfortunately, it didn't shut them all up. Actual words seen on-screen on a cable news channel this morning:

The bridge fell
from the sky
on a train
in the river
where's your brain? (Italics mine)

I suppose they could have reincarnated Dr. Seuss to do the on-screen text....